


Fruit of the Tree

by sidana



Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 14:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16221377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidana/pseuds/sidana
Summary: Avery's crash course in the vampire world beyond the Church of Eternal Life





	Fruit of the Tree

Disclaimer: not my character, not my universe. I'll put everyone back where I found them when I'm done playing with them.

*******************

"Hello there. I'm Faust. Jean-Claude sent me over here."

Avery carefully eyed the strange vampire that had showed up at his door. Faust looked pleasant, unassuming, and non-threatening. If a human passed him on the street, the only thing that would really register about him was that he was a little on the short side for a guy. But as new of a vampire that Avery was, he could still feel Faust's power, and it was strong. Not as strong as Malcolm or Anita, but still strong enough to be more than formidable compared to an ordinary vampire. And along with the strength was a sense that Faust was somehow familiar, even though Avery was meeting him for the first time. It was a sensation he had come to associate with crossing paths of others of Jean-Claude's kiss.

"C'mon in then. I know it's not much," he said as he waved his arms around the entryway of his townhouse, "And I usually like to run the vacuum before company, but you're welcome here. Living room's this way." He led Faust past the stairs and into the living room.

"It's more than you realize. The idea of so much living space for one person is a modern thing, and still seems like a luxury to me. When I was growing up, our house was about the same size as yours, but it was my parents, six kids, and my mother's maid sharing that amount of space. And we were considered to be middle class for our time. I never even got a room of my own that I didn't have to share until I was fifty-seven."

"So I'm already getting the whole 'kids these days' speech?" he asked. Not that you wanted to anger or seem overly familiar with a master vampire you didn't know well, but there was a bit of humor in Faust's voice that made it seem like it would be okay.

"With where I live, I never get to use the other line about 'hey, you, keep off of my lawn'. So when I do get a chance to play the grumpy old man, I feel like I've got to take it."

Avery was curious at that. Faust didn't feel as old as Malcolm or Wicked or Truth, but sometimes you just couldn't tell. But it would have been rude to ask Faust just how old he was.

"So what do you do when you aren't playing the grumpy old man? And let me pour a cup of coffee a minute."

"Were you expecting human company?" Faust said as he gracefully flopped onto the couch.

"No. Silly as it sounds, it's just been a part of my getting up routine since I was about fifteen. I can't drink it anymore, but there's something so comfortable about the smell of it. So I bought a one cup Mister Coffee, and make my one cup every night, waft the coffee fumes all around, and then toss it out full when I go to bed in the morning."

"It does smell nice in here."

"It's a Kona blend. No scents or weird flavors added to it, just coffee as God intended us to make it. So what brings you to my home tonight?" He hoped it wasn't some sort of trouble. After everything that had gone down, Avery just wanted a quiet life for a while.

"It's part of my job. I'm one of the people who keeps track of all the details in the Kiss so that Jean-Claude doesn't have to."

"So I'm one of the details?" He asked as he put the mug on the coffee table and too a seat on the couch next to Faust.

"Very much so. You're part of our kiss now, and Jean-Claude takes his responsibilities to his people seriously. He asked our office to come check on you to see how you were doing, and if there were any of your needs that were not currently being met. I volunteered for the job because meeting new people is interesting, even when the alternative does not involve Elinore trying to dump all the paperwork for OSHA standards and carnival workers on my not terribly broad shoulders."

Avery laughed at the mock exasperation in Faust's voice.

"So, I'm like on your schedule or something?"

"You're on my to-do list today along with keeping carnival workers safe when they work on rides, checking on the green card status for a couple of acts Jean-Claude wants for the Circus, and having the first talks with a decorator for doing some updates at The Laughing Corpse."

"Dang. Anything you don't do?"

"Go up on stage at Guilty Pleasures. At least never again. We had an emergency need for strippers so I tried."

"Do I want to know what constitutes and emergency need for male strippers?"

"Nothing too weird. It was just the night before the night of the full moon, and sometimes the weres end up getting a little too wiggy to go on stage that night. I was the new guy then, and I wanted to seem like a team player, so I gave it a try. But I'm a proud bugger, and when the results involve a woman stuffing a five in your g-string for pure sympathy reasons rather than because you're any good, then my pride's going to keep me from standing on that particular stage ever again."

Faust laughed at the memory, and Avery joined in with him. Sometimes it had seemed like the people he knew through church were in full dour spiritual mode all the time. It was always nice to meet another vampire who didn't seem to take life and undeath so damn seriously.

"But enough talking about me. And I know I like to talk about me, especially with someone who hasn't heard all my stories already. What I need to ask is how you're doing, see if there's anything the rest of the kiss can do for you, and try to figure out what you bring into the kiss in return. So first question then: How are you since Anita took your blood oath?"

Avery opened his mouth to start to speak, closed it so he could think over the question a little more without looking dumb, and then finally figured out the right first set of words.

"I'm not really sure anymore." He had long ago been warned not to show weakness or indecision in front of strange master vampires, but there was something about Faust that made him want to trust the other man.

"What do you mean?"

"It's like things are different for me and with me now. I feel a little bit stronger and a little bit sharper, and I notice the details about people and things a little more than I used to. I'm waking up about ten or fifteen minutes earlier and conking out the same amount later than I used to. It's like Malcolm always warned us of the dangers of blood oathing, but I feel like there are starting to be some good things about it as well."

"In some ways, Malcolm was right. There are plenty of other Master vampires that keep everyone in their kiss on a short and rather unpleasant leash. But Jean-Claude isn't one of those. He feels that at the end of the night, if you surround yourself with people who are willing to protect you because of love or affection that they'll fight harder for you than those around you who are there because of fear, compulsion, or obligation."

"What about you, if it's not too personal of a question? I mean you and Jean-Claude?" Faust felt strong enough that no one could really force him to against his will. If he'd offered up a vein willingly...

"I did take a blood oath with him when I came to St. Louis. I've known him long and well enough to really trust him with that part of me. And St. Louis is not the kind of place that you can turn down the power that both of us gain by the oath."

"Everyone else at the Church thinks it's wrong, and it's not like I can say anything against what Malcolm's teaching in order to change their minds. And when the subject comes up, and it does a lot because there's a lot of gossip about Jean-Claude's people whether or not anyone knows anything real, I end up feeling like a pervert or something because I can't just blindly accept what the Church says anymore."

"You're not a pervert. You're finally asking the kind of questions in your mind that everyone should ask about what they're taught in life. For all that Malcolm talks about what we do takes away free will, he does the same when he does not tell you of all the benefits and dangers of the different things you can do in your new life."

Faust put his hand against Avery's bare forearm, and Avery found himself almost leaning into the warmth in that hand. Faust must have already fed for the night to have that much heat still in him.

"Thanks. But it's like Malcolm's only part of the problem. And most of the time, he's the guy forty rows ahead of me up in the pulpit and not a part of my life the rest of the week. So it's like he's the small part of the problem. The bigger part is turning out to be some of the deacons and other people I thought I knew and who knew what kind of a person I was. We're talking people I thought I knew too, and who I thought were my friends." The words started to flow out into a rush. "They all know what happened to me, and half of them won't say anything to my face, and the other half talk about how it wasn't my fault what happened, But they all kind of have this look on their faces, whether they realize they're doing it or not, like I smell like something really bad that I can't wash clean of myself, and that they're worried that I'll spread the taint as well."

"I'm genuinely sorry to hear that." Avery glanced over at Faust, who looked more serious than he had since he showed up at Avery's door.

"There have been people who have still been good to me. I guess I've figured out who my friends really are now, and who are the people I never could rely on."

"If they treat you like that, then fuck them. Life's too hard as it is, and you don't need to make it any harder by trying to get back in the good graces of people you don't really need."

"Yeah, I keep trying to tell myself that. But unfortunately, it's one of those things that are far easier in theory than they are in reality. It's like I'll keep automatically thinking about how things used to be, and then I have to catch it and remind myself than Kyle and Eddie and a bunch more people just aren't a comfortable part of my life like they used to be." He sighed and looked down at his hands, catching a glimpse of the face of his watch. "And, oh crap."

"What's the thought?"

"That as nice as it is to talk to you, it's meant that I'm going to miss my feeding reservation at the Church."

"Malcolm has a reservations system for that?" The surprise was obvious in Faust's voice.

"You can even schedule your dinners online these days. Eddie set up a web site for that."

"And if you do miss a reservation?"

"It's not like I'm going to starve or anything. Malcolm strongly believes that it's his charitable duty to provide shelter and food to anyone who shows up at the church doors. But it's again with the deacons. They already give me the stink eye when I come in, like they expect me not to rip some poor human girl's clothes off and haul her off into the coatroom to have my way with her. And that's when I'm not missing something I've already committed to do."

"You don't have to go there, you know." Faust patted him on the arm again.

"Then what else am I supposed to do? I don't want to try to pick up a woman at a bar or something, screw up again and find myself up on rape or unlawful use of power police charges. I know how even an accusation of that can turn out so fucking horribly for me."

"You can come over to the Circus with me. Jean-Claude's like Malcolm in the sense that he won't let one of his people go hungry or without shelter either. And it would help resolve one question I had from what Anita had said about you."

"What's that?"

"That Malcolm and his people did not teach you how to take blood from a femoral artery."

"He didn't. We were taught that feeding on a donor was sacred. To mix it up with something so overtly sexual was wrong."

"And if your donor wants sex to be part of the experience?"

"The party line was that was one of the things that would be discussed in couples counseling if you were going to marry a human."

"Don't tell me. And that was the only time it was mentioned?" Faust sighed.

"Pretty much."

"Because we all know just how reliable abstinence-only education is in general. C'mon, I know someone who is good with helping new vampires learn how to safely feed from pretty much any blood point. We go back to the London days, and she's at the Circus now. Interested?"

"I guess so." Avery said softly, doing his best to disguise just how much the ideal did appeal to him. After his brief foray into the adult entertainment world, at first there had been almost a comfort to going back to the church to feed. It had been his way of doing penance. But he could only do penance of that sort for so long before wanting to feel more of everything again. "Let me get my coat, and I'm ready to go."

"And I'll let Phillipa know we're on our way," Faust said, pulling out a cell phone as he headed toward the door. Avery was relieved to know that the donor for the night was a woman. For all that they tried to make feeding at the church a chaste event, there was still something he found unsettling when he fed off a man. After the first couple of times going from the neck with another guy and finding that it felt too much like kissing him, he had gone to feeding from the elbow with the male donors he had been paired with.

Avery got his coat on, and left the townhouse, locking the door behind him. He looked around to find Faust now standing under a parking lot light next to a late model Audi. Faust waved him over to the car, and Avery found himself quickly sliding into the neat leather seat.

"Nice car," he offered. It was the kind of car you bought because you liked how it all fit together, not because you were necessarily needing to impress someone else with it. That seemed to mesh with the rest of what he had seen of Faust's personality- the mix of confidence and being powerful enough that he didn't really have to think much of the opinion of most other people.

"The Germans know how to do it right, and it's nice to be living in a place where I can really take the car through its paces. Back in England, the roads were insanely crowded pretty much all night long, and it cost about eight dollars a gallon for petrol. Here's it's easy to find a filling station with reasonable prices, and a big stretch of empty road not too far from town. Seat belt on?"

"It is now," Avery said as he locked the belt into place.

"Jean-Claude's rule for people in his kiss who do drive. I guess technically it's Anita's rule, but it's pretty much the same thing."

"So the two of them together, how does that work?"

"It's one of those things that's easier to observe rather than have explained to you, but I can try on the way to the Circus," Faust said.

The drive turned out to be a crash course on preternatural politics in St. Louis. By the time they made it to downtown, Avery thought he had a grasp on who the big players were, even though he longed for a nice flow chart to help explain exactly how everything and everyone interconnected with each other. With an explanation that he knew how to avoid some of the traffic issues that tended to plague the Blood District at that time of night, Faust cut down a series of back roads that dumped them into the Circus of the Damned parking lot without having to go down the main drag of the District proper.

"And here we are," Faust said as he parked and turned off the engine.

"Do you live here?"

"Some of the time, I've got an apartment in one of the new buildings going up by the stadium, but I've got a room here as well when it's looking like it would be touch or go to make it home before sunrise. If you want a space of your own here, just let Elinore know. She's in charge of housing these days, and the caverns down here give us enough room that everyone that wants one gets their own bedroom."

"Thanks for letting me know that."

"You're family here," Faust said as they moved into the Circus and down a stairway that had clearly not been shaped with any sort of power tools. They made a few more turns down stone and brick hallways before ending up in a small living room or reception room where a handful or people sat talking on couches. "And speaking of family, here's Phillipa."

"Family in the sense that one of us is the eccentric cousin, and I'm probably not filling that role." A tall slender black woman with a British accent and braids in her hair rose from one of the couches. She was barefoot, and wore only a pale green tennis dress. For all that she was trying to pass as human, the energy around her was all wrong- too warm and too almost liquid.

"Um, hi there I'm Avery," he said as he offered a hand to her. She took it, and he felt the jolt as her power met his. Werewolf. The energy definitely felt like werewolf.

"And that I am," Phillipa said.

"Sorry there. I didn't mean to be babbling," he said, realizing he had spoken his thoughts out loud. She was his willing donor for the night. The last thing he wanted to do was insult her or have her feel like he was somehow being rude.

"I wouldn't say you've reached the babble stage yet. Don't know if you've met Byron yet, but compared to him, you're not even close. Now I actually do genuinely like the guy, but his vocal tics start to put me on edge after a while. I'm not his duckie, or his poppet. And I'm definitely not his lamb. He tries to tone it down around me, but it's not like he can unlearn his way of speaking overnight, especially when there are people around here who do like it when he calls them poppet."

"Don't look at me, dear. I don't encourage him either," Faust said, smiling at her description of some other guy.

"But enough of talk about other men when you're probably standing here starving."

"It's not an immediate need," Avery said. He had long ago gotten used to never feeling quite full enough. Tonight wasn't really any different in that regard.

"But it would be nice for both of us," Phillipa said with a smile as she boldly looked him directly in the eyes. It had been a long time since someone had done that outside of church feeds. "Are we using your room here, Faust?"

"Yes. Housekeeping cam through yesterday, and they should have cleaned up anything there that would have scared Avery off."

Avery bit back an impulse to ask just what might be in Faust's room that would scare him off. He probably should know that, but with Phillipa in the flesh standing there right in front of him warm and willing, he was ready to just give in to it all. At this point, there probably wasn't much else that would damn him in the Church's eyes, was there?

"Ready when you are," he said.

"Then let's stop talking and retreat to my Fortress of Solitude," Faust said. The man came to stand slightly between him and Phillipa. Then he grabbed Avery by the elbow, and gave Phillipa a light swat on the butt to send the two of them in the right direction. A brief thought flashed through Avery's mind and he wondered why Phillipa got the slap and he didn't. Then they were quickly moving down another hallway and into a bedroom containing a four-poster bed, an overstuffed chair that was almost as wide as a loveseat, and an old-fashioned wooden wardrobe that Faust stashed their coats inside.

"And you thought he was kidding about the Fortress of Solitude bit," Phillipa said as Avery noticed the Superman movie poster on the wall.

"I'll have you know that my partners do indeed think I'm the man of steel," Faust shot back. "But enough about me tonight."

"And considering your ego, we need to encourage these moments where it really is not all about you," Phillipa said as she claimed the chair. Faust stuck his tongue out in return.

"So I'm going to go over the rules with you here, Avery," Faust said, talking a seat on the bed. "Of course we're not as strict as the Church is, but it's not like just anything goes."

"Rules are good," he said as he sat down next to Faust and resisted the urge to press himself up against someone who was seeming warm and familiar in the strange world under the Circus.. He had the sense that he had been handled a gift of an opportunity tonight, and he didn't want to unknowingly screw it up.

"Okay then. First rule is that you don't feed off people without their consent. You always ask permission before you roll them, and make sure they understand what you're asking of them. Rule two is that you stay away from people who aren't in a position to give consent. If they're drunk, stoned, in a freaky emotional place or whatever, then they're not going to be on your feeding list."

"Definitely sober here tonight. It damn near takes everclear to get a werewolf drunk," Phillipa offered.

"That's good to know," Avery said.

"And rule three is that sex is a different agreement between you and the other person than feeding is. And you discuss it before you roll your donor. Once things get going, then your donor isn't considered to be in a condition to give consent anymore, and Jean-Claude considers that to be a form of date rape. And Jean-Claude does not show mercy or restraint when it comes to disciplining rapists."

"Understood there," Avery said. "And, um, you seem like a nice person and all, but I don't really know you that well and..." Maybe some other guys would just jump into the life of the damned with both feet, but as pretty as Phillipa was, he just wasn't quite ready to go there with her.

"Would have told you no anyways. My boyfriend's fine with me feeding vampires but when it comes to actual sex, we're monogamous," Phillipa said.

"And that's the three basic rules. The unofficial fourth rule is to treat your donors kindly and respectfully. I don't much go for the whole flowery speech about the sacred bond between the vampire and the apple of their eye. But truth is that even if you don't treat them well because they're giving you a gift and it's the right thing to do, then at least you treat them well because it's in your best interest to do so. It's far easier to keep a relationship going with one of your current donors than to have safely find and cultivate a new donor. It's not too different than all that customer service stuff the business schools teach these days about brand loyalty if you think about it."

"So I'm like supposed to develop some sort of Avery brand here. Sounds a lot more complicated than just going back to the Church."

"But at the end of the night, the rewards are far, far greater. And it's always good to have a couple of safe people you can go to outside of the Master's domain. It's not about trusting Malcolm or Jean-Claude. It's about not trusting other vampires that come to visit Malcolm or Jean-Claude. Good to have some place where you can lay low for a couple of days when some other Master, or, even worse, a Council member shows up in town."

"And it just keeps getting more and more complicated."

"It's the price you pay for being a full part of vampire society, and not just a night shift Mormon," Faust said then paused. "But I shouldn't be talking politics right now, not when Pip there is ready and willing."

"Pip? Don't tell me you're going on a nickname kick too."

"Always trying to work with Byron to desensitize you there," Faust said. In return Phillipa flipped him the finger, and he replied. "Not like you'd ever have a chance with me for that."

"Okay, what happens now?" Avery asked. The banter between the vampire and wolf made him feel comfortable enough that he could relax in the room. And by letting down his guard in that area, he realized just how hungry he was.

"You start out from the beginning like you always would," Phillipa said as she pulled her short dress above her waist and shifted in position to offer him an expanse of her toned thigh. "Just let me warn you a sec that shifter blood can have a bit more kick to it than human does."

Then their eyes met again, and he let that part of him he otherwise kept so tightly boxed up out just a little bit. The power flowed between them, and he watched Phillipa's muscles relax, the small movement revealing more of her thigh and groin. He carefully got to his knees just in front of the chair.

"You really need to put more into rolling your donors. It needs to feel as good for them as it does for you," Faust's voice came from behind them.

"But if I take it too far, then they can't let me know if I'm hurting them or taking too much. And if we roll them too much, then it messes with their free will," he said. For all that he'd started to question Malcolm's teachings, they were still what he had to rely on when it came to keeping everyone safe when he fed.

" I can stand up to shorty there. You're not going to be rolling me until I don't know how to say no mas anymore," Phillipa said, her voice slurring just a little bit from the connection already between them.

"And Pip can heal more damage and blood loss than a human can, and I'm right here in case things get out of hand," Faust said.

So for the first time in his nocturnal life, Avery let the power flow out of him unchecked. Phillipa made a long low noise that sounded like a happy hum as he came to rest his face against her knee. He could feel her, sense the blood flowed through body and heart with a warmth that was greater than he'd found in any human. With eyes half-closed, he took more of the feel of her, and he felt one of her hands begin to stroke through his hair as the hum continued. He could tell that she was truly and hardly in thrall to him, and that both terrified and excited him.

Moving even closer to her, he slid his face along her soft thigh, taking a moment to enjoy the feel of her not as a donor or as a supernatural creature, but as a woman, something he had not had enough of in his life lately. From what he could see through the thin green panties, he could tell that she kept herself trim, but didn't wax it all away. Point for her. He preferred women who didn't look like children or dolls down there. And then his nose twitched. He forced himself past the scent of her growing arousal and to the place where he could smell the great swell of blood coming closest to her kin.

He sunk his fangs into that spot, and he felt a jolt of power flow between them as the most amazing thing he had tasted in his life began to flow down his throat. It was liquid and energy and power and richness and the most overpowering sensation of life he had ever taken inside of himself. He felt a brief flash of temptation to take all of it inside himself until the fountain went dry.

But he quickly quashed that, instead taking the same number of mouthfuls that he would take from any donor at the church. It would not do to destroy something so remarkable because he had a moment of greed. He broke the connection between them, gave one last lick to the small wound and pulled back just far enough to rest his face on the middle of her thigh again.

"Wow," he managed as he briefly craned his neck to look up at the rest of her.

"Not bad for a rookie," she said in what had to be her post-sex voice as well.

"Glad we seemed to both like it," he said, moving in his neck into a more comfortable position, which unfortunately put her groin back at eye level. He could smell her sex and see the dampness that had come through her panties. And Phillipa's boyfriend was okay with this when it essentially was sex? Avery had felt himself getting aroused as the blood entered his system, and the sight of her clearly wet had made him go hard and damp as well. But whatever else he was, he was not going to be a home wrecker for someone who had just given him an amazing gift.

He tried to move to his, but as he did, he was hit by a wave of dizziness as he tried to stand up. Then Faust was at his side, an arm supporting him around his shoulders.

"Okay there?"

"It's like, whoa, world moving all around there. World is still moving there, and Pip there seems like sparkly with power," he managed as Phillipa moved her skirt back down over her legs.

"Looks like the wolf blood's left you a little bit drunk," Faust said.

"I'm not drunk."

"Not in the old human technical sort of way, but you count as drunk."

"Nah. When I got drunk when I was human, I was a fucking sad drunk. This, this is definitely different. It's like I'm filled with energy and my body just can't figure out how to contain it all."

"As one of our poets described us, we are so filled with life that no one shape can contain us," Phillipa said, standing up from the chair. "Not surprising you'd get that same feeling from me."

"It's a little bit scary but a whole lot of cool. Thank you," he said.

"Very much my pleasure," she said, gently kissing him on the cheek. "Faust can give you my phone number if you're interested in a same time, next week for the next couple of months."

"Sounds great to me," he said, and with one more kiss, she was gone from the room.

"Want to sit down here?" Faust asked.

"That would be good. Legs are still feeling a little bit twitchy."

He let Faust steer him to a seat on the bed. To his surprise, Faust sat with him on the bad, arm still wrapped around him. And at that moment, Avery realized just how lonely he had been lately. He found himself pulling closer to Faust, his new warmth blending to the other man's warmth. He had tried to go back to his old life of the cold church buildings, cold walls, cold donors, and what had turned out to be far too many cold hearts. Was it really so bad to let himself be drawn to a place where it seemed like he could really feel everything again? He felt like he had paid his penance for his time with the N sisters. He wanted to find something more in his life.

He found himself burrowing into Faust's shoulder, even at he felt the discomfort of having to scrunch down to do so. In response, Faust drew his other arm around him, and began to gently rock him on the bed.

"I'm not usually like this," he began.

"It's what you needed tonight. It's part of learning that you're so much more than what Malcolm lets you know."

Maybe he'd picked up a little bit of the wolf in the feed, but he couldn't help but notice just how good Faust smelled. It was nothing he could really put into the right words; he could just say it was wonderful perfume. And he could also smell that Faust had gotten something out of watching him and Phillipa. The same old forbidden thought flashed through his mind, and maybe it was the buzz from the feed there too, but somewhere deep down inside of him decided that it was time to finally stop denying it when he felt that kind of attraction, to stop slamming those kinds of cold doors between himself and other men.

Acting on the impulse the was either going to damn him or save him, he pivoted around Faust's body so he directly faced the other man, and he kissed him.

And Faust kissed him back. Still warm breath met with still warm breath, warm lips met warm lips. He had no idea how long the kiss went on, or what was supposed to happen next. All he wanted was to keep and strengthen that sharing of warmth. He found himself sliding his hand down the neck of Faust's shirt in order to touch that bigger expanse of skin.

"Avery," Faust finally said as they broke far enough apart to talk.

"Um, shit, shit, shit. I usually don't, you know. I wasn't thinking about jumping you." Part of him wanted to pull away from the other man. Part of him wanted to pull back closer to Faust's warmth.

"It's okay. It's more than okay. You're a very good kisser," Faust said, giving him a very real and honest smile.

"So what am I supposed to do now?"

"Nothing for tonight."

"What do you mean? I thought I was reading it right and that, you know?"

"Like men in general? Definitely? Like you in particular? Things are promising so far there. You're good looking," Faust said, and Avery realized that he had indeed taken enough blood from Phillipa to blush. "And from what I've seen so far, I like your personality as well. But since you've got no tolerance for wolf and buzzing all around me, under Jean-Claude's rules, you're a little too tipsy to make up your own mind right now, and I'm not going against Jean-Claude in that regard. And for all that the reputation about here is that we're a bunch of sex fiends, I like to take it slow with my relationships with other vampires. Because when there's the potential that you're going to live down the hall from the other guy for the next two hundred years, I don't want to rush into something that ends up blowing up between us so badly that you can't stand the sight of him."

"So if I'm not like drunk?" And if he didn't start to freak out about how nice it had felt to kiss Faust once the buzz wore off. Heck how good it felt still the be wrapped in the other man's arms.

"We could go out on a date. You're probably been in St. Louis a lot longer than I have. You could show me all the locals' hot spots around town."

"And what happens after that?" While talking was good, and he had decided early on that Faust was fun company, it was what could happen after the talk that both fascinated and scared him.

"We take things at a pace we're both comfortable with."

"You know, I've never done anything like this before. I never even really let myself think about that kind of stuff."

"Not much different than going from human child to human adult. More choices, more responsibilities, more learning to think for yourself instead of just assuming your parents or maker knows what's best for you. And sometimes you end up surprising yourself quite a lot at the end of the day or end of the night."

Avery ended the freeze and chose to snuggle back close to Faust. He didn't know what the future or even the rest of that night would hold. But he had found comfort in an unexpected place, and after everything he had been through lately, he wanted to keep taking that in to keep the greater cold away.


End file.
